His appearance/psychological depression/aggressive
behavior/deep love towards Catherine/
Heathcliff is the embodiment of what
is known by literary types as the romantic hero. He enters the Earnshaw home as
a poor orphan and is immediately stigmatized because he is all alone in the
world. Baby Heathcliff is characterized as devilish and cruelly referred to as
"it" in the Earnshaw household. His language is "gibberish"
and his dark otherness provokes the labels "gipsy," "wicked
boy," "villain," and "imp of Satan." This poor
treatment is not much of an improvement on his "starving and homeless"
childhood, and he quickly becomes a product of all of the abuse and neglect.
Because his skin is dark, he is never
be accepted by his adoptive family or the villagers. Heathcliff
should be given the name of Earnshaw, but he is not.
Heathcliff's arrival is seen as a direct
threat to everyone, but mostly to Hindley.
Coming from Liverpool (a port town
with many immigrants), Heathcliff is very likely mixed race. Some critics have
suggested that he is partially black or Arab. Could he be Mr. Earnshaw's
illegitimate child? This would explain his father's strange insistence on
including him in the household.
Victorian England was fascinated by
gypsies, and they appear in novels like Jane Austen's Emma and Charlotte
Brontë's Jane Eyre,
among others. Gypsies, who were thought to have come from Egypt (which is where
the "gyp" part of the word comes from), were objects of
discrimination, partly because their traveling lifestyle made them people
without a nation or land (like Heathcliff), and partly because they just looked
so different from the typical Anglo Saxon. In nineteenth-century novels,
gypsies often steal children.
Though the mystery of Heathcliff's
background is never solved, there is endless speculation and fascination about
his appearance. Mr. Earnshaw introduces him to his new family by saying that he
is "as dark almost as if it came from the devil" and he is called a
"gipsy" by several different characters.
His determination to gain control of
both Wuthering Heights and the Grange is driven by his desire to become
master in spite of being so much an outsider. His envy of Edgar's
light-skinned handsomeness is part of what fuels his anger about Catherine's
choice.
During a three-year absence,
Heathcliff is physically transformed. No longer a beaten-down street kid, he
has become, as Nelly puts it:
“... a tall, athletic, well-formed
man; beside whom my master [Edgar] seemed quite slender and youth-like. His
upright carriage suggested the idea of his having been in the army. His
countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr.
Linton's; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation. A
half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of
black fire, but it was subdued…”
By the time Lockwood meets him, Heathcliff is still dark and swarthy, of
course, but now embodies the social status that he has gained over the last
twenty-five years. Lockwood notes:
“Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular
contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in
aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many
a country squire”.
At this point in Heathcliff's story,
he contains oppositions: his ethnic background presents a strange contrast with
his master-of-the-house look. Though he acquires the property, he can never
change his appearance and what it implies socially
Heathcliff and Violence
Heathcliff can be a real beast, which
comes across through his numerous threats, violent acts, and symbolic
association with that unruly pack of dogs (with names like Throttler and
Skulker). In some ways he is the supreme depraved Gothic villain, but his emotional
complexity and the depth of his motivations and reactions make him much more
than that.
Heathcliff often falls back on
violence as a means of expression, both of love and hate. Having been abused by
Hindley for most of his childhood, Heathcliff is the classic
victim-turned-perpetrator. His rage is tied to the revenge he so passionately
seeks, but he also undertakes small "extracurricular" acts of
violence, like hanging Isabella Linton's dog. Whether he is capable of sympathy
for anyone, but Catherine is highly questionable. As Nelly recounts:
“[Heathcliff] seized, and thrust [Isabella] from the room; and returned
muttering—"I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the
more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind
with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain."
That pretty much sums up his
attitude—dude has zero pity—and he's talking about his wife! He treats his son,
Linton, no better. Linton's sickly demeanor is a contrast to his father's
strong and healthy physique, and Heathcliff has no tolerance for the poor
little guy.
Though Heathcliff expresses and often
enacts violence against just about everyone in the two houses, he would never
hurt Catherine. However, his love for her is violent in the sense that it's
passionate and stirs a brutal defensiveness. Importantly, by the end of the
novel Heathcliff admits to Nelly that he no longer has any interest in
violence. It's not so much that he is sated as that he is just... over it. As
he tells her:
I get levers and mattocks to demolish
the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and
when everything is ready, and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off
either roof has vanished! My old enemies have beaten me; now would be the
precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and
none could hinder me. But, where is the use? I don't care for striking. I can't
take the trouble to raise my hand!"
Heathcliff and Catherine
As readers painfully recall,
Heathcliff leaves his beloved Cathy after overhearing her say it would degrade
her to marry him. That moment really hurts, because if anything is obvious,
it's that Catherine is Heathcliff's soulmate and his only ally against Hindley.
In a sense, their love remains
immature, since they were only ever "together" as young children. The
moments of joy that haunt Heathcliff for the rest of his life occur over just a
few pages. Many of them take place as an escape from violence, as in this
memory recounted in Catherine's makeshift journal:
"Hindley is a detestable
substitute—his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious—H. and I are going to
rebel—we took our initiatory step this evening."
Without her, Heathcliff quickly turns from
mythic hero into well-schooled brute.
Heathcliff and Cathy are haunted by
each other; each sees the other as inseparable from his or her being. As
Catherine tells Nelly Dean:
"Nelly, I am Heathcliff—He's always, always in my mind—not as a
pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself—but as my own
being—so, don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable."
This confession is one of the novel's
most famous lines, because it so poignantly expresses the nature of Heathcliff
and Catherine's love: this love is not the stuff of Valentine's Day
cards. It's beyond the physical, transcending all else. Heathcliff tells Nelly:
"I cannot look down to this
floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree
filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day... my
own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful
collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her."
Heathcliff and Cathy see themselves as one and
the same, which is interesting considering how big of a deal everyone else
makes about Heathcliff's "otherness": his swarthy complexion and low
social standing. Cathy doesn't care about any of these differences; her love
renders them meaningless.
But, this closeness also leads to one
of the biggest problems in the novel. Because Catherine considers Heathcliff to
be a part of her, she does not see her marriage to Edgar as a separation from
Heathcliff. For Heathcliff, though, soulmates should be together. Her
death only increases his obsession, and he goes so far to have the sexton dig
up her grave so he can catch one last glimpse of her.
While he can be a horrible brute,
it's easy to pity Heathcliff. After all, he finds his perfect love and she goes
off to marry a stiff like Edgar Linton. Does Brontë intend for us to like Heathcliff?
It's hard to tell. Emily's sister Charlotte wrote that "Heathcliff,
indeed, stands unredeemed; never once swerving in his arrow-straight course to
perdition".
